Monday, August 26, 2013

Metaphysics

There are some fundamental questions that most every person will ask early in life. These questions seek to understand our origins, ethics, and destination. Thankfully, we are not left without answers.

The Lord has given us the answers in His inspired, inerrant, and infallible Holy Scriptures. The questions of who we are and where we came from can be answered together. Scripture tells us that we are special creations--the crown glory of creation--made by and in the image of our Triune Creator (Genesis 1:26, 31).

As Christians, we are pilgrims on this earth who are called to be testimonies and witnesses of Christ as we are heading into our eternal rest with Him (1 Peter 2:11, 2 Peter 3:13).

This eternal rest can be received by repenting from--that is forsaking--our sin, and faith in the finished work of Christ as full satisfaction for the debt that we have each incurred which deserves eternal torment in hell (Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 6:2, Galatians 2:16, Revelation 21:8).

One might ask, how can one know of his or her own sin and guilt; how can one determine what is wrong? As the Heidelberg Catechism states, we learn of our sin from the law of God, which requires that we love the Lord with all that is within us and that we love our neighbors as ourselves (Heidelberg Catechism, 1563, LD 2). God's law sets the standard of what is right and good (Exodus 20).

The solution is that "One who is a true and righteous man and yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is at the same time true God... by the power of his divinity [bore] as a man the burden of God's wrath, and recover[ed] for us and restore[d] to us righteousness and life" (Heidelberg Catechism, 1563, Q 15, 17).